Indiana Republican's ‘outsider' campaign for Senate includes a push for no paychecks if Congress can’t pass a budget. Funny, because here's what he did during the federal shutdown in 2013.

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Todd Rokita’s official dive this week into the U.S. Senate race and his “Defeat the Elite” platform certainly left Hoosiers plenty to unpack.

That Rokita, the 4th District congressman from Brownsburg, was positioning himself as a Washington, D.C., outsider wasn’t much of a surprise – no matter how big of a stretch it was. Donald Trump rode that theme about rigged systems and swamp-draining all the way to the White House in 2016. With the president’s Indiana campaign leaders touting Rokita an all-in Trump fan, the congressman seems more than willing to ride it, too, as he looks for ways to make subtle digs – not to mention outright trolling – against U.S. Rep. Luke Messer, his early GOP competition.

Whether Rokita can pull off what Trump could, we’ll find out by May 2018, when a Republican nominee will emerge to challenge Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly.

#defeattheelite tells you everything you need to know about how Todd Rokita is going to position himself v. Luke Messer in #INSen R primary.

But as Messer has accurately complained early and often in the lead-up to this race, Rokita has one ingrained, Trump-like characteristic: He’s willing to say just about anything.

Rokita might have been Indiana secretary of state for eight years, but this primary race will be the one when Hoosiers statewide will find out, for better or for worse, what 4th District constituents have learned through seven years of experience.

His introductory speech was a curious churn of Defeat the Elite themes, including a call for term limits for career politicians. How many terms? The two-term secretary of state/four-term congressman/first-term-hopeful senator didn’t spell that out.

Still, it was enough to get Indy Star columnist Matthew Tully to post Oscar Mayer pics and determine Rokita’s outsider/non-elite campaign was “stuffed with baloney.”

One of the better lines on the Statehouse steps – presumably no location was available as a backdrop in the 4th District, where calls for town halls have gone unanswered in 2017 – was his commitment to something called “No Budget, No Pay.”

The fundamentals are sound: Members of Congress should be held accountable if they can’t deliver a workable budget. Rokita touted Indiana’s balanced budget provisions and promised to fight for the same as a U.S. senator.

Fair enough.

But Rokita conveniently forgot to mention what happened in October 2013, when No Budget meant No Government for a short time.

At the time, Rokita gloated about how the federal government shutdown was a stand against the Affordable Care Act. He said at the time, “We’re doing exactly what our constituents asked us to do,” by delaying the rollout of Obamacare. The longer the shutdown, the better his chances, he told me in a conversation from Washington, D.C. “I think we’re going to win.”

As other members of Congress pledged to refuse a paycheck or to donate their pay to charity, Rokita made it clear that he was going to cash his check. In fact, Rokita said, he deserved it as he stood his ground.

Here’s what he told me that day: “The problem I have with holding my pay or anything like that is that sends a message that we aren’t doing our job, and that I don’t deserve my pay. … I’m doing my job. I’m doing exactly what Hoosiers want me to do, and that is fighting out-of-control growth of spending for the federal government, exemplified most recently by Obamacare.”

You don’t think that quote’s going to resurface a few times?

We’ll see how long the glass houses stand in a GOP primary where candidates are pulling rocks out of their pockets.